i84 HORSEMANSHIP. 



much as possible, of the natural tread, leaving the whole of 

 the bottom of the foot to take its natural place on and hold 

 of the ground. The sole is slightly concave at the bottom, 

 and convex above, but if a remove has not taken place for 

 some weeks the surface meeting the ground will be found 

 nearly flat, the crust, bars, frog, and sole being all in one plane. 

 A horse that has never walked in a shoe preserves a sHght 

 dome-like formation of sole, though nothing approaching 

 that concavity wrought by the unsparing use of the 

 drawing-knife, the bars and frog being in firm contact 

 with the ground. Under certain circumstances and in 

 very dry climates many horses work a life-time without 

 shoes — the Australian race without plates of any kind — 

 but in this humid climate of ours a substantial hoof 

 armature is absolutely necessary with a large majority of 

 all classes of horses. The drift of the operation of farriery 

 ought to be to supply additional strength to the foot in 

 order to render it capable of resisting the hardest bodies 

 and of sustaining the additional weight we pile upon the 

 horse's back. We want all the sustaining strength obtain- 

 able in the walls, so the modern fashionable shoeing-smith 

 rasps away a considerable amount of its thickness to make 

 the foot fit the shoe, in lieu of the shoe fitting the foot. 

 He pares away till the sole is reduced to a thinness that it 

 yields to the pressure of the thumb. That triangular mass 

 of soft horn, the frog, intended by nature to act, in conjunc- 

 tion with an internal mass of fatty and fibrous tissue, as a 

 cushion to prevent concussion, and to render progression 

 easy and springy, is so neatly cut away that except in deep 

 ground, it cannot possibly perform its functions. The 

 bars, which, as they attach the wall of the hoof to the 

 pedal bone, might be considered of first importance in the 

 structure, are also subjected to this insane desire of making 



